Sunday, July 26, 2015

July
is almost done and August will soon be here, though from the cool weather
that's moved in the last week, you'd think that July was already over. No
complaints though; it was far too hot previously and most everyone here on the
Island is glad to see the rain this week.

It
does make you wonder where the time goes, though.

Back
when I didn't have a job, my days were still pretty full. I wrote, I thought, I
searched for jobs and I took time to relax each day so as not to stress out
about my lack of employment or other things that were affecting my life at the
time. Each day was passed in its own time and for the most part, aside from the
stress, I felt that I put in as much as I've gotten out of every day gone.

Right
now things are full again, but in quite different ways. Having someone special in
my life to care about means that I have to really think on how I'm spending my
time. Priorities being what they are, along with my rather busy day job of
late, I'm finding I'm lacking energy in the evenings to do much creatively and
that's really been bothering me. To the point where my shoulders are all
knotted up with stress and that's just compounding the issue. At least I can
recognize it now, having spent years unconsciously stressing and not
recognizing the physical signs.

There
is no cure for it save conscious decision: to step up and make the best use of
my time every day. Just like when I was completely unsure of the future of
years ago and couldn't see myself in the position I am now: prepared to move
into an even better phase of my life, one step at a time.

I
just have to keep taking those steps, every day.

July 21 – Trek Décor Extremis

If
I owned a house, I sometimes wonder what it would look like inside.

After
all, a man's home is his castle, as the saying goes and if I was a homeowner, I
would have complete say over what the interior of my house would be. Maybe it
would look like this guy’s place:

Steve
Nighteagle has converted the interior of his Colorado cabin into the home of
every Star Trek fans dreams. While it's a little much for a place that I would want
to spend all my spare time in as a house, I still am agog at how complete the
conversion is: it's only one step down from full-size starship interiors direct
from any one of the films or television series.

My
preference would be to build sets from Babylon 5, naturally, but those tended
to be for the most part fairly light on cool gadgetry to please the eye. To be
honest, I wouldn't build anything unless I want in a fairly huge amount of
money, a which case I would have standing sets built from many of my favorite
shows, including some cartoons - that's what being filthy rich is for right - living your dreams? Being able to walk the
decks, corridors and rooms of places that exist only in fiction would certainly
qualify as one of my dreams and worth spending some of my money on, should it
come to that.

In
the meantime, I can live vicariously through the realized dreams of people like
Steve.

July 22 – Slinging Arrows?

Don’t
have any dodgeball leagues in your area? Is paintball too expensive?

Why
not try archery tag?

My
ears perked up this week when a few friends mentioned they were going to be
playing at a new local gaming place called Clash
Of Arrows. I used to be an archer, back in my university days( I still have my bow and arrows! )but
haven’t had either the transportation or the scratch to join a local archery club,
all of which meet well outside Victoria proper:

Clash
of Arrows is located close to downtown, which places it within an easy cycle or
bus ride. Two teams of archers take turns shooting well-padded arrows at each
other, or at targets, trying to score points for a win. It looks like safe,
fast-paced fun demanding a good deal of archery skilly, so I think that next
time my friends are going, I will ‘tag’ along.

Sadly,
they won’t let me bring my own bow.

July 23 – Amiga At 30

Has
it really been 30 years?

The
Amiga computer came out 30 years ago today, a machine that I far preferred to
any PC of the time and still think of fondly for all that it was capable of.
Imagine owning a machine that could play stereo sound as rich as an orchestra
in an age when most personal computers could barely string two beeps together
of different tones, or whose graphics consisted of a fantastic range of colors
by the thousands compared to a limited few dozen other systems of the time.

If
you're not familiar with the Amiga, it's worth your time to at least have a
look at what the future looks like 30 years ago. I still have my Amiga and haul
it out from time to time, though it's so sadly out of date that I can't do much
more than browse nostalgically through the programs that I used to use and marvel
at how elegant they still are in the usability and function. Here's a25th anniversary video by the celebrated Amiga enthusiast Eric Schwartz:

Incredibly,
a good number of the games I used to enjoy on the Amiga had made their way over
to Android, including classics like Battle Squadron and Another World. Dedicated
developers have made software that was originally designed for the Amiga
available now for android through programs like Amiga Forever, meaning lifelong
fans like myself can still enjoy the classics on modern hardware like phones or
tablets with minimal fuss.

Long
live the Amiga!

PS
- just to show how far and how fast hardware is developing, someone managed to
run the original Half-Life on a WATCH!!! It’s even playable, though at that
sort of screen size, you have to wonder who would bother other than those who
simply want to see it running in the first place. That's the sort of challenge
that keeps fans of older systems going, whose dedication and ingenuity I have
to salute!

There, I had the pleasure of seeing many fantasy and science fiction authors in
person, garnering a wealth of experience that helped me to decide that I wanted
to be numbered among their ranks someday. Terry Pratchett was there, along with
Neil Gaiman, who read his memorable Hugo-award-winning short story “A Study in
Emerald” to a mesmerized crowd that included yours truly.

One
of the attending authors was Robert J Sawyer, author of almost 2 dozen novels,
including Far-Seer, a stunning novel about sentient dinosaur-like aliens living
on the moon of a gas giant. I've always liked Mr. Sawyer for his willingness to
share his experiences as a Canadian author with other writers with the noble
goal of helping everyone to understand how the business works.

In
the most recent ( and excellent!
)interview from SmallPrintMagazine.com, Robert
J Sawyer gives some incredibly useful advice to amateur authors such as myself,
hoping to make a living as writers in the speculative fiction field. Nuggets such
as this one give me hope that I can turn my hard work into a living to carry me
along year-to-year as I write my way through my life:

This
is the sort of advice that you just couldn't get even 10 years ago without
actually speaking to an author who had found success. Even more frustrating is that
every writer can find success in a different way and with the landscape
changing constantly given the proliferation of self-publishing and e-books,
there's tons of new information that you have to sort through all the time for
the few gems that might be useful to your particular situation.

Having
somebody like Robert J Sawyer spell it out advice simply and make it easy to
find on the Internet eases the uncertainty in finding my own success. I hope
that I have the chance to express that to people like him in the future, once I
have my feet firmly set on my own personal path.

July 25 – Alternative Toons

Since
its Saturday today, let's talk cartoons!

Back
in the 90’s, MTV’s Liquid Television was a strange, wonderful place, full of
odd cartoon series like The Head and Aeon Flux. They were both fun and
unsettling to watch, being unlike anything else on TV at the time.

The
Maxx was another regular series on Liquid Television that fit that description,
in spades:

The
series is worth watching, as it deals with some serious issues while doing so
with gorgeous animation and trippy plotlines. You can read about it here, but
honestly, just watch it – I’m planning on revisiting it soon, when I can just
sit down and do a rare binge-viewing of it.

To The Maxx!

July 26 – Thunder!

The
clouds rolled in today – boy, did they ever!

A
sun-and-cloud morning turned into an even cloudier lunchtime, with angry
thunderheads moving in across the Island. It started to rain and in parts of
the South Island, it poured, complete with hail:

Despite
what you might think, this is a good thing. Vancouver Island dries out in the
summer, with dead-brown lawns and tinder-dry trees everywhere, it’s been so dry
for so long( Canada Day fireworks were cancelled in many parts of the Island
)that rain like this is a welcome relief. I was actually awakened from an
impromptu afternoon nap by a crash of thunder, which sounded like someone
dropping a huge load of scrap metal onto the road a few blocks away – whoa!

Overall,
the last week’s been rather tiring, as we switched over to a new phone system
at work late last week. Oh and has many wonderful features and promises to make
our job easier, the last two weeks have been fraught with bugs on top of
getting used to the new system - nothing unexpected, really but it still means
things have been doubly difficult on a daily basis when dealing with our usual
issues related to regular operations. It also didn't help that the phone system
went down completely on two separate instances, but hopefully those are the
only major bugs we will have to face from this point onwards. There is much potential
in the new system that I hope to see in full development soon.

In
addition to being tired, the muscles in my legs have been rather painful for
the last month for no particular reason. I've only ridden my bike twice and in
both cases, my legs have felt like I've severely strained the muscles, which is
baffling as I wasn't riding hard at any point. I've been taking it easy, to the
point where I haven't trusted myself to bend my legs while bearing my full
weight at any point without support, due to the way they've felt. I'll have to
be sure to stretch from now on you for any bike rides, which boggles my mind.
Hopefully that alleviates the issue.

This week coming up, I'm
going to be writing every single night. My Muse has been unhappy with me lately
as I've been unable to fully immerse myself in my fictional worlds so that I
can write from that complete point of view. If I can't do that for a few hours
every night, then my writing will not be nearly at the level that it needs to
be in order for me to be happy with the end results.